Winter is at it’s core the season of rest and renewal.  Sometimes we need to recharge by doing nothing and live for a time in that void between harvest and spring, letting our field go fallow for a time before we are ready to sow seeds again.

Like the wise trees in William Carlos William’s poem below, when we are weary, we need to relax and free ourselves for a time from worries in order to prepare ourselves for the new growth of Spring.  We need to find a place to rest and gestate.  This void is not death, it is alive with possibility.  From this in between state, from this apparent nothingness, something eventually will come, something will emerge.

Winter Trees

All the complicated details

of the attiring and

the disattiring are completed!

A liquid moon

moves gently among

the long branches.

Thus having prepared their buds

against a sure winter

the wise trees

stand sleeping in the cold.

William Carlos Williams

I find a sharp, bright Winter’s day is the perfect time to go walking in the woods to recharge my batteries. Nature is a great source of renewal for me when I am weary or my problems seem overwhelming.

Do you know what works for you? Working out what helps you to rest and renew yourself in the face of life’s challenges is a key way you can begin to look after yourself. It need not be expensive, access to nature – beaches, forests and open spaces – is well known to be good for our mental health. And sometimes this is all we need to do: take the time to work out what we need to do to take care of ourselves and then take the next step, which is doing it.

Of course, there are other times when we need some extra support, like working with a therapist to identify what is going on in our lives and what we can do to help ourselves – if this feels like its you, have a look here to find out a little more about counselling.